A new [9]host has been setup to host [10]archives of unofficial architectures. It replaces gnuab.org and currently hosts the armel, hurd-i386 (unreleased only), kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 architecture.

Developers can look at the [11]build logs of their packages and check their [12]status.

PTS web interface—————–

The [13]PTS web interface has gone through some changes: * added RSS feeds for the “latest news” part of the PTS pages (by zack) * added hyperlinks to per package [14]svn-buildstat info (by luk and kibi) * added rendering of some new info: DM-Upload-Allowed field, maintainer being in the [15]LowThresholdNmu wiki page, Homepage field (by zack)

Different compression algorithms for debs—————————————–

The ability to compress binary packages with something else than gzip (for example bzip2) has been in dpkg-dev and dpkg for a long time, since 1.11 [16].

The way to add it to a package is to use the “-Z” switch of dpkg-deb. Or “dh_builddeb — -Z bzip2″ from within debian/rules.

Unfortunately, both [17]lintian and [18]linda incorrectly report that this should not be used.

Advanced package search prototype in experimental————————————————-

Enrico Zini created [19]apt-xapian-index, a prototype indexer for a system-wide [20]Xapian-based index of packages.

The index allows to perform very fast queries on package descriptions and tags, and any package can install plugins to add extra information to the index.

Also available is an extensive [21]tutorial on how to use the index.

[22]apt-xapian-index, currently in experimental, will be uploaded to unstable as soon as some technical feedback is received, especially with regards to the index structure and the plugin interface.

Changelog entries must describe changes—————————————

While reading changelogs (through debian-devel-changes@l.d.o), we see too often bad changelog entries that describe the problem that they fix without indicating how they fix it. In a changelog the important bits are the description of the change and not only what lead you to do the change. Hopefully some examples will make it clearer: